in 2008, and barack obama was elected president. he come spodz office with what assumptions about iraq, and how did his views on iraq play out? >> well, president obama, as a candidate-- and i interviewed him twice on iraq, single subject, as a candidate-- his view was he campaigned on ae platform of taking all of the american combat brigades out inn 16 months with a date certain. >> rose: okay, then he gets into power, and he withdraws the troops. and then there are negotiations to leave some troops, which yous you believe was a significantwa mistake, that negotiation failed. and so they did not leave five, 000, or 10,000 troops there. 1 what happened? >> well, first off, withha president obama, he really did not fulfill his campaign promisf literally of taking the troops out in 16 months.s he pretted much ended up takingly them out on george bush's schedule, the end of 2011. two, the other thing is what people don't realize is the t obama administration tried to de a lot more than just take troops out. they tried to re-engineer th